47
Tessa
“See how elastic our prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.”
All two hundred of us sitting in the audience at this private luau, including me, are cheering and laughing and basically experiencing death-by-adorableness right now. At the invitation of the professional dancers onstage, the few kids in our group have come onstage to try their hand at hula dancing, which means Coco and a few other cutie-pies are up there now, swiveling their little hips and making semi-hula-esque movements with their arms. Adorable.
When the kiddos clear the stage to furious applause, the emcee calls for ten to fifteen “lovely ladies” from the audience to come up and give the men a show. Well, of course, Kat pops up and drags Sarah and Hannah and several of her friends from college up there with her, and Keane stands and physically carries his mother up to the stage as she giggles and squeals her head off, which then prompts Ryan and Dax to grab Louise’s two sisters and bring them up to the stage, too. And, ultimately, we’re treated to a performance by the women that makes everyone cheer and applaud and laugh uproariously. Kat, especially, steals the show—man, does that woman know how to work that baby bump in a grass skirt!
Finally, the ladies leave the stage and the main event arrives—the moment we ladies have been waiting for since this little exercise in audience participation began: the emcee calls for a dozen or so gentlemen to come up and shake what the good lord gave them in a grass skirt. It’s a suggestion that prompts every woman in the room to shriek and cat-call with a ferociousness that would put an audience at a Magic Mike show to shame.
It’s interesting and funny to see which guys in our group leap up and which ones couldn’t be dragged onstage by wild horses. Jonas, for instance, clearly won’t be dancing for our enjoyment tonight, and neither will Dax or Colby.Nope. They’ve all crossed their arms over their chests and they’re plastering their asses onto their chairs like they’re Superglued onto them.
But, glory be, there’s no such resistance from the more extroverted hotties in the audience, a group that includes Josh, Reed, Henn, Zander, Keane (of course), a few of Josh’s fraternity brothers, and, thankfully, the one and only Ryan Ulysses Morgan.
The minute our gregarious men get onstage, an army of bare-chested male Hawaiian dancers descend upon them and, in no time flat, strip them of their shirts, and wrap them in grass skirts and other adornments.
As the audience looks on, hooting and hollering enthusiastically, loud drums begin thumping frenetically, cuing the professional dancers to break into a frantic and jaw-dropping display. After a few minutes of the dancers showing our men exactly what’s expected of them, the professionals move aside and cue the drums again.
And that’s when sheer pandemonium breaks loose.
Oh my God, our men aren’t holding back up there. They’re shaking and flexing and hopping around in their bare chests and grass skirts, each of them displaying their unique and full-throttled interpretations of the professional dancers’ earlier moves. Okay, first off, this is just freaking hilarious. I’m pretty sure I just now peed a little from laughing. But, second off,oh my God,this is hot as hell. I mean, holy macaroni, that’s a hot group of men up there! Especially Ryan. I mean, yes Keane and Josh have an obvious leg up on their competition from a “dance moves” standpoint—but, in my opinion, Ryan’s got them all beat when it comes to sheer magnetism.
I bite my lip watching Ryan, my abdomen tightening with desire.
I want him.
Quickly, it becomes clear who the stand-outs onstage are, and, as if by design, the guys group themselves into two “teams” onstage—Josh, Reed, and Henn on one side versus Zander, Keane, and Ryan on the other—and we women cheer and scream, goading them into a fierce and funny three-on-three hula-off.
Oh my God, I’ve died and gone to heaven. I’m crying with laughter. I glance down my long table and discover Kat, Hannah, and Sarah at the other end, all of them crying tears of laughter, too. By chance, Kat glances at me while I’m looking at her, and, without hesitation, she blows me a kiss before looking back at the stage.
And, just like that, I suddenly feel like I’m right where I belong in this world. With these people—a part of this wonderful family. A family who so obviously loves each other unconditionally.
Tears well up in my eyes and I wipe my cheeks, suddenly not sure if I’m crying tears of laughter at the performance onstage—or if, after this past year of shocking betrayal and heartbreak in my life, if, maybe, just maybe, I’m crying about something else entirely.
The dance-off is over.
Everyone in the audience resumes their seats, wiping their eyes from laughter, and the professionals prepare to resume their show.
But as our men put their shirts back on and begin walking offstage—Ryan bounds over to the emcee and whispers something in her ear.
She nods and hands Ryan the microphone.
“Hey, Keane,” Ryan says into the mic. “Hold up.”
Keane stops descending the steps of the stage and waits.
“Alooooha!” Ryan booms to all of us in the audience.
Everyone replies in kind, all of us already well trained how to respond to this greeting here in Hawaii.
“Before we let the show resume,” Ryan says, “I think we should get the two best hula dancers of the night up here for a dance-off. What do you think?”
Everyone shouts and applauds their enthusiasm for the idea.
“Keane, come back up here, man.” He turns to look at the line of professional dancers, standing off to the side. “Can we get my brother back into a hula skirt?”
A male dancer quickly descends upon Keane to dress him.
